Well, since King v. Burwell was not announced today, I guess I'll clear out another mess of stuff from my in box (Note: Many of these stories should have their own full entries, but I just don't have time at the moment):
IMPORTANT: The "death spiral" which isn't happening referred to in the link below is the one which Republicans claimed would happen due to the ACA itself. Ironically, if they win King v. Burwell, such a death spiral would almost certainly happen in the 30+ states which aren't running their own exchange.
Not so long ago, critics of Obamacare were warning of death spirals, the risk that too many sick people and not enough healthy ones would sign up for insurance, triggering a cycle of ever higher costs for insurers and steep premium hikes for consumers.
No King v. Burwell Supreme Court decision again today, but most pundits were always expecting it nextMonday, June 29th, anyway.
However, there's a total of 7 cases still left to announce (including Obergefell v. Hodges, aka the same-sex marriage case), so they've also tacked on another extra Opinion announcement day: Thursday the 25th.
I'm not gonna get a damned bit of billable work done this week, am I?
UPDATE: According to CNBC's Dan Mangan, they've added Friday the 26th as well...
At this point, pretty much every healthcare reporter, pundit and especially the healthcare actuaries are pretty much reduced to this:
Welp, it's Monday again, which means it's time to once again huddle in front of my keyboard while anxiously watching SCOTUSblog's Live Blog of the Supreme Court's opinion announcements...
Of course, they might not make the King v. Burwell announcement today, either; it could still be next Monday, the 29th. Or, they could throw in another surprise "bonus" decision day on Thursday. (sigh)...
UPDATE 10:20am: NEVER MIND. No King v. Burwell announcement today.
I think the headline accurately depicts former Texas Governor and current Presidential Candidate Rick "Do The Glasses Make Me Look Smarter?" Perry's defense of the appallingly high uninsured rate in Texas during his 14-year tenure as chief executive of the state.
Perry appeared on FOX News Sunday with Chris Wallace this morning, and for the 2nd week in a row, Wallace actually acted like a Real Journalist® instead of a GOP/FOX hack and pressed Perry with some solid questions regarding the sorry state of healthcare coverage in his state.
Took my wife and 9-year old to see Pixar's latest, Inside Out.
Sheer brilliance. Run-don't-walk to see it, etc. etc.
For anyone who was afraid that they'd lost their touch with Cars 2* (and only partly regained their footing with Brave and Monsters University), I'm thrilled to report that they're back at full throttle here.
That is all.
*(I actually kind of liked Cars 2, but I know most people seemed to hate it.)
No matter how the U.S. Supreme Court rules on the King v. Burwell challenge to the Affordable Care Act, Vermont lawmakers say they are optimistic about their state’s health exchange.
State Republican leaders are ratcheting up the pressure on Congress to overhaul the Affordable Care Act if the Supreme Court this month rules that subsidies on the federal exchange are invalid.
Republicans from 33 states have written to Congress as part of a coordinated message urging federal legislators to develop a plan that would free states from the pressure of setting up their own exchanges to salvage subsidies, according to the Foundation for Government Accountability, a conservative think tank.
While some people spend their lives in search of the Holy Grail or the Lost City of Atlantis, Huffington Post healthcare reporter Jeffrey Young has spent the past year and a half on a Lifelong Quest to discover the elusive, mysterious Republican Replacement Plan for the Affordable Care Act.
Now, here's the thing: I'm not saying that Mr. Roy's 20% is wrong, or that McKinsey's 27% is wrong. Maybe they're correct. I've only documented about 10% of the QHPs as being off-exchange; perhaps it really is only 20 or 27% of the total. I'm just saying that there's too many unknowns for anyone to conclude that it is 20% or 27% for exchange QHPs either. It's still a big unknown.
Furthermore, I do appreciate him at least bothering to read my own analysis. He's a Big Established Expert and I'm just some web developer in Michigan. He's (from his Forbes bio) the Opinion Editor for Forbes, a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, and was a health care policy advisor to Mitt Romney...while I create websites for small businesses, often while wearing a bathrobe.
But that doesn't mean that he's right, either...and unless I'm missing something important here, nothing that he's said proves that he is.
